Carrier billing in Western EuropeMarket report by Fortumo
Overview
Carrier billing in Western Europe
While Western Europe is generally considered a region with strong online payment penetration, numbers tell a different story. In fact, only 38.3% of Europeans have access to bank cards with an e-money function and only 41% of have made an online purchase during the past 3 months. This means merchants are missing out on a significant amount of paying users unless they add alternative and local payment methods like carrier billing and direct debit.
Fortumo’s Western European white paper gives a high-level overview of the biggest markets in the region as well as insights on the carrier billing landscape, user spending behaviour, device preferences and localization. The data presented is from web payments (desktop & mobile - on feature phones, tablets & smartphones) from Fortumo’s cross-platform payment solution.
Markets Overview
Smartphonepenetration
Credit card penetration
Germany 65% 46%
France 66% 44%
Population
81M
66M
United Kingdom 54% 62%
Italy 61% 36%
65M
61M
Spain 66% 54%
Netherlands 72% 34%
46M
17M
Belgium 44% 43%
Greece 45% 12%
11M
11M
GDP percapita
Median ageCountry
Portugal 45% 29%
Sweden 63% 45%
$45,888
$40,375
$39,511
$35,486
$33,711
$47,355
$42,973
$25,859
$26,975
$45,986
10M
10M
46.1
39.7
40.5
44.5
41.6
40.8
43.1
43.5
39.7
41.2
This white paper gives an overview of the mobile payments landscape in Western Europe. It covers 10 of the biggest countries in the region by population: Germany, France, United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Portugal, Sweden.
Carrier billing landscape in Western Europe
Carrier billing in Western Europe
Maximum transaction size Spending limits
Germany €29.99 €100 per month
France €1050€ per day, 200€ per month
Carriers & Market Share
T-Mobile (33%), Vodafone (32%), E-Plus (16%),O2 (14%), Mobilcom-Debitel (5%)
Orange (40%), SFR (32%), Bouygues (17%), Free Mobile (10%), Virgin Mobile (1%)
United Kingdom 30 GBP (€43) no limit
Italy €15 120€ per day
O2 (30%), Vodafone (25%), T-Mobile (17%), Orange (17%), 3 (11%)
TIM (35%), Vodafone (32%), Wind (23%), 3 (10%)
Spain €7.26 60€ per transaction
Netherlands €5 no limit
Movistar (40%), Vodafone (32%), Orange (22%), Yoigo (6%)
KPN (40%), Vodafone (24%), T-Mobile (23%), Tele2 (5%), others (8%)
Belgium €4 no limit
Greece €5 30€ per day
Proximus (38%), Mobistar (30%), Base (27%), Telenet (5%)
Cosmote (50%), Vodafone (29%), Wind (21%)
Payment types availableCountry
Portugal €4 no limit
Sweden One-off payments, recurring payments200 SEK (€22) 600€ per day
TMN (42%), Vodafone (39%), NOS (19%)
Telia (45%), Tele2 (26%), Telenor (17%), Tre (11%), TDC (1%)
One-off payments, recurring payments
One-off payments, assisted subscriptions
One-off payments, assisted subscriptions
One-off payments, assisted subscriptions
One-off payments, assisted subscriptions
One-off payments, assisted subscriptions
One-off payments, assisted subscriptions
One-off payments, assisted subscriptions
One-off payments, recurring payments
Carrier billing in Western Europe
How popular is carrier billing in Europe?While carriers themselves are not too keen to share data on the popularity of carrier billing, their annual reports and Fortumo spending data allows us to estimate the payment method’s reach.
For this estimate, we will use Germany and T-Mobile (largest country & its biggest carrier). T-Mobile’s revenue in Germany from VAS services during 2014 was ~€242 million. Fortumo’s annual ARPPU for 2014 in Germany was ~84.15. Therefore, the estimated number of T-Mobile users who paid via carrier billing was 2.8 million (€242 million divided by €84.15 spent per user).
As T-Mobile had ~29 million consumer subscribers in Germany during 2014, we can say that an estimated 10% of all mobile phone owners pay for goods and services using their phone bill.
Note that the actual popularity of carrier billing is most likely higher: Fortumo ARPPU & retention rates are based on high ticket size digital content and gaming merchants while other carrier billing providers also operate in low ARPPU & retention segments like basic value-added services
Carrier billing in Western Europe
User Spending Behaviour & Platform PreferenceInformation based on web payments (6 months average, January 2015 - June 2015)
Germany
France
United Kingdom
Italy
Spain
Netherlands
Belgium
Greece
Country
Portugal
Sweden
Monthly ARPPU ($)
Average Transaction Size ($)
Desktop MobileTablet
36%
6%
22%
5%
18%
11%
6%
48%
28%
15%
7%
11%
5%
6%
11%
20%
15%
7%
18%
9%
57%
83%
73%
89%
71%
69%
79%
45%
54%
76%
12.29
11.83
25.7
10.73
8.54
6.3
6.22
9.6
6.22
6.14
9.66
5.46
10.22
3.19
4.2
2.57
3.06
3.3
2.63
3.22
GermanyLanguage preferences
74.4% German8.5% English2% Polish15.1% other
FranceLanguage preferences
94% French1.6% English0.9% Portuguese3.5% other
United KingdomLanguage preferences
87.3% English1.9% Polish0.9% German0.9% Arabic9% other
ItalyLanguage preferences
91% Italian5% English1% Romanian3% other
SpainLanguage preferences
89.5% Spanish5.6% English1.4% Catalan3.5% other
NetherlandsLanguage preferences
78.6% Dutch10.2% English2.1% Polish9.1% other
BelgiumLanguage preferences
54% French27.4% Dutch7.5% English11.1% other
GreeceLanguage preferences
85.6% Greek9.5% English0.9% Russian4% other
PortugalLanguage preferences
93.2% Portuguese5.6% English0.4% French0.8% other
SwedenLanguage preferences
73.8% Swedish11.3% English2.7% Arabic12.2% others
Carrier billing in Western Europe
Language & LocalizationInformation based on browser locale (6 months average, January 2015 - June 2015)
Additional reading
Mobile Payments in Central & Eastern Europe
Read now
European carriers and the €26 billion online commerce opportunity
Read now
Swisscom case study: how do mobile operators benefit from direct carrier billing?
Read now
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Fortumo allows any merchant to set up payment processing for web and mobile services, games or apps. Users with a mobile phone are then able to make one-click payments using Fortumo without the need for a credit card: payments are charged to their mobile operator bill instead. Fortumo supports payments in more than 90 countries through 350 mobile operators. Founded in 2007, Fortumo has offices in Estonia, San Francisco, Beijing, Delhi, Mumbai, Singapore and London and is backed by Intel Capital and Greycroft Partners. Get started with mobile payments at https://fortumo.com.
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